Iguazu Falls and Salta — The road liss traveled

So as I mentioned before, I wasn’t done with Argentina just yet! I really wanted to see Iguazu falls, which is in the far northeast part of Argentina, where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet. It’s annoying because it’s in the middle of nowhere. From BA it’s an 18 hour bus ride or a 1.5 hour flight. I’m lazy, I splurged for the flight. Chile and Argentina are just too damn big and spread out!

All the red lines are flights I took. Wayyy more flying on this trip than usual

The flight to Puerto Iguazu was as smooth as can be, and it’s interesting to watch the landscape change from dry and arid to lush tropical jungle. It’s a small town with nothing around it but trees, and it feels like they purposely built the airport 20kms away for the sole benefit of the taxi drivers. I checked into my hostel that evening and would head off to the falls the next day. Being that Iguazu straddles Brazil and Argentina you can see it from both sides. On the Argentina side you get the best view from the top and the mouth of the falls looking down and on the Brazil side you get the better view looking up towards it, a little downriver from the falls. A few years ago it would have been very expensive for an American to do this, you’d need to pay a $160 for a visa for Argentina and $160 for a visa to Brazil, but now they’ve done away with those visas and it’s very easy to see both sides thankfully!

The few English speakers in my hostel had already seen the falls, so I would be on my own. But on the Argentina side it’s super easy to get there, there’s buses that leave every hour and drop you off out front. Obviously the most popular spot is the lookout from over the top of the falls, and to get there you have to take a short train ride, which is included in the price, but consists of you packing in very tightly with lots of other sweaty people. Deodorant seemed to be lacking. I was one of the last people on this train and they made a very overweight woman scootch over to accommodate me, which wasn’t exactly pleasant for me or her, but I didn’t want to wait for the next train! From there it’s another 20 minutes walking along platforms stretched out over small islands in the super wide river/mouth.

It’s shockingly calm on the river above the falls. It’s very spread out, shallow, and the water doesn’t appear to be moving that quickly. If you didn’t know it was one of the worlds biggest waterfalls ahead it would actually seem like a pretty good place to take a swim! The iron clad walkways stretching over the river are a bit narrow, so you’re always getting stuck behind slow walkers, families, strollers, fatties, or what have you. Finally you reach the overlook of the falls and as soon as you can wedge your way in between selfie sticks, it’s an amazing view! The main part of the falls is absolutely thunderous but there are also many other cataracts and smaller waterfalls that give the place a feel of epic proportions. It probably is the most impressive waterfall I’ve ever seen, although experiencing it through the throngs of tourists definitely takes away from it’s magnificence a little bit! Also the photos really don’t capture completely the volume and power of the water that you can feel dropping over the edge!

Above the thunder! It’s hard to capture the sense of scale and power

Fortunately there is a lot more to place than just this one viewpoint! After taking the body odor train back towards the main section of the park there are few kilometers more of walkways giving you more interesting views of the falls and all of it’s different cataracts. It’s hard to stress enough how huge this place is! It’s not just a waterfall, it’s like a whole network of rivers and sheer cliffs apart from the main falls that all make up Iguazu. Plus its a jungle, so there are also some massive spiders, tropical birds, monkeys, coatis (something like an anteater) and even a crocodile! The trick is really finding some of the viewpoints that you can have by yourself that aren’t inundated with the tourist horde so you can really appreciate the sheer magnitude of the waterfalls.

One of the massive spiders, having lunch apparently

In total I spent about four hours on the Argentinean side of the falls. When I got back I ended up doing dinner with a Dutch girl where we split a monster steak and salad. The only problem in Argentina (and Chile) is that their salads are crap. Like the normal dressings that we have in the US don’t exist here. The salads are normally served dry, with hardly any ingredients (maybe some onion/tomato) and you have to drizzle some olive oil on it. Balsamic vinagrette if you’re lucky! So bland! In Patagonia we ordered a carrot salad, which I just assumed was green salad with carrot varieties or something, but nope, just one huge bowl of uncooked shaved carrots. That’s it! Waaat. Anyway, the steaks make up for it! Sorry no pics!

The next day it was off to the Brazilian side of the falls, which requires a more expensive bus, a trip through immigration, and higher park fees. But I’m pretty sure this is the one time in my life I’ll be here, so why not? The views on the Brazilian side are very nice as well, and you get the best view of the mouth of the falls from down low, although there’s not so many paths and viewpoints so you really only need about an hour on this side! I ended up meeting a Swiss girl on my bus who was also somewhat cynical about this side of the waterfall and we got along well! That night we met up for… you guessed it… steak and malbec! This is nearing the end of my Argentina trip, so might as well get as much red meat as I can!

not bad! If it wasn’t for all those god damn tourists! :p

This one give you a better sense of scale

The next day I hopped on another flight to the far northwest part of the country, close to the border of Chile and Bolivia, a place called Salta. It’s a semi-arid wine region known for it’s colorful red rock formations. Something a bit like Southern Utah. It straddles the altiplano deserts to the west. It also has some interesting history. One of the main things to do in town is visit the museum of high altitude archaeology that is famous for it’s mummies of Llullaillaco, the best preserved Incan mummies ever found, and among the most well preserved of any mummies in the world. The mummies are children, drugged and sacrificed to the gods as part of an Incan ritual. The stratovolcano they were found on tops out at 22,000 feet, the dryness of the air up there helped greatly to preserve the remains. And it was only 20 years ago that they were found!

But most of the stuff to see around here isn’t in Salta, it’s all around Salta. You can do some really nice scenic loops around here with a car or motorcycle, so that’s what I was gonna do! EXCEPT, I didn’t do my research (shocking!) and it was another long holiday weekend for Argentines (shocking!) and every single rental car agency had nothing. Zip. Nada. So that was kind of a bummer. Of course there are group tours and stuff, but Salta is far from gringo-land so everyone is gonna be Chilean or Argentinean and it’s gonna be all incomprehensible fast talking Shh Spanish.

But still, I had to do at least one tour to see the countryside. And actually there was one other gringo on the bus! An older super grumpy British guy, possibly the biggest grouch I’ve met on the whole trip, bitching about the time, the stops, the AC, obviously didn’t speak a single word of Spanish. He wouldn’t even switch seats so a woman with young kids could have a spot with more room. So everyone hated this guy. With all the bus being Spanish speakers, this was the guy I’m naturally supposed to be buds with, wtf! Anyway, we made some nice photo stops on trip, went to a winery, had some time to explore this little touristy wine town, and then back to Salta. It was fine, but travel fatigue and lack of English fatigue is setting in and I was just about done with group tours! Normally I would have tried to do at least one more sightseeing trip, because there’s definitely more to check out, but ehh screw it, I took the bus over the border to Chile for the final time. Smack in the middle of the desert. San Pedro de Atacama, the Atacama desert. Here’s the view south of Salta:

Some gorgeous scenery a couple hours south of Salta, towards Cafayate (wine region).